Warwick horsewoman has long record of fraud

A $1,900 judgment for a Pine Island car mechanic. More than $4,000 owed to a Pine Bush veterinarian, and $11,000 to one in Highland. Roughly $6,000 in fines to the New York State Department of Labor.

Gittel Evangelist

A $1,900 judgment for a Pine Island car mechanic. More than $4,000 owed to a Pine Bush veterinarian, and $11,000 to one in Highland. Roughly $6,000 in fines to the New York State Department of Labor.

At least $150,000 due to assorted horse supply companies.

Court documents show a Warwick horsewoman has left a trail of judgments and bad debts owed to dozens of victims up and down the East Coast.

Kimberly Ann Martin, 52, who currently runs a horse farm on Almond Tree Lane in the Town of Warwick, is known by more than 30 aliases, most of them variant spellings of her first name and her two married surnames, Luyster and Keenan, according to the national Lexis-Nexis database. She's done business under the names NY Dressage, NY Dressage-Georgia, Sky Equestrian, Horsefeathers Farm, Horsefeathers Group, Meka Farm, Ladys King Limited and Garden State Shavings. She's racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid debts in New York, New Jersey, South Carolina and Georgia over the last decade, and has a long history of arrests, police and court records show.

Martin has convictions for minor offenses such as petty larceny, and numerous arrests on felony grand larceny and forgery charges; often, the charges were reduced or dismissed entirely after she agreed to satisfy a given debt. For example, Martin wrote a bad check in February 2013 for $480 to Narrowsburg Feed and Grain, which withdrew its criminal complaint after she paid in full, state police Investigator Chris Quick said.

Martin, who currently goes by the name Kimberlee A. Martin-Keenan, was most recently jailed in April on a felony forgery charge after New York State Police said she wrote a fraudulent check for $444 to a New Hampton lumberyard for horse fencing.

When Martin appeared July 15 in Warwick Town Court to answer that charge, her lawyer, John F.X. Burke of Goshen, and an assistant district attorney said they'd reached an agreement for her to plead guilty to misdemeanor petty larceny and serve four weekends in Orange County Jail. But Town Justice Peter Barlet tabled the deal, saying, "That may be OK with you, but not with me."

"What is that, boutique justice?" Barlet said, indicating the agreement was too lenient. "Ms. Keenan has been here a number of times. I don't want to see her again."

He adjourned the case until Aug. 19, pending a probation report.

Martin declined to comment after leaving court.

Seth Arluck, co-owner of New Hampton Lumber, said Martin wrote the $444 check on March 11 on a closed account from the former North Fork Bank — which was acquired by Citibank six years before. The check was imprinted with the name Traction Media Group LLC, with no address.

"As far as we knew, her name was Sky Kelly, and she was operating under Sky Equestrian," Arluck said.

A couple of days after Martin wrote the check, he said, it was returned unpaid.

When he called her about it, "She said, 'Oh, my husband's bag got stolen so we put a stop payment on all the checks and we closed the account,'" Arluck recounted. "She said she'd send in another check that week. She gave me a plausible story.

"We waited another week, and then she wouldn't answer the phone anymore," Arluck said.

A week after that, he called state police.

Arluck's case represents one of the smaller claims against Martin.

Two Chapter 13 bankruptcies, filed by Martin in 2010 and 2011 — both of them dismissed because she failed to make the court-mandated payments — enumerate more than $229,000 in debts, including $4,900 owed to a New Jersey funeral home for her mother's burial services in 2005. Martin owes others much larger sums, including $68,000 due to a South Carolina company that sells shavings used for horse bedding. In addition, a State of Florida man claims he was bilked of more than $100,000 in fraudulent horse consignment deals beginning in 2007 (see sidebar).

Shortly after her latest arrest, Martin was sentenced to three years' probation for petty larceny, a misdemeanor, after making unauthorized withdrawals from her ailing uncle's bank account, Warwick Village Court records show. She was originally charged with forgery, grand larceny and falsifying business records, all felonies.

Prosecutors agreed to reduce the charges because Martin's uncle, Charles Lonegan, 72, "suffers from documented dementia," Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler said. "That right there creates an almost insurmountable problem for us as prosecutors."

Hoovler did not hold the office at the time of Martin's plea bargain. But, he said, "Even if it happened on my watch, my opinion would be the same. The question becomes, is the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt?"

Martin's cousin, Steven Lonegan — a former longtime mayor of Bogota, N.J., who also ran for governor and U.S. Senate — disputes that claim.

"I discovered that my uncle, a successful retired college professor, lost his life savings in only a few months under the so-called 'care' of a relative — a person with a sordid record of passing bad checks and ripping off people. The Orange County prosecutor let her off with a simple misdemeanor, a slap on the hand."

Assistant District Attorney Leah Canton, who prosecuted the case, said, "The problem is that (Martin) was the only family member who was taking care of (her uncle). When I first met (Charles Lonegan), he said she did not have permission (to make withdrawals from his account); then he said, 'Oh, no, she did have permission.' The only witness we had was him. Depending on which day you spoke with him, you'd get a different answer."

John Burke, who represented Martin in the case, said Charles Lonegan had willingly given her access to his bank account. Burke said Martin took care of her uncle when other relatives had refused — the same relatives who later went to police with accusations of elder fraud.

Burke said Martin had saved her uncle from the clutches of "hookers and drug dealers" in the State of Florida, gave him a place to live and drove him to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

"I'm not saying she's pure as the driven snow," Burke said. "She did things she shouldn't have done. She used his ATM card and she shouldn't have done it. But at the end of the day, the money equaled out."

Asked about Martin's long list of bad debts and bad checks, Burke said, "A lot of people bounce checks."

Burke also represented Martin in her bankruptcy filings, as well as the pending criminal case in Warwick.

Asked if Martin had paid him for his legal services, Burke replied, "No."

Asked if he would continue to represent her, he said, "After this (case), I'm done."